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771. Coping with climate change: what works for women?

Author:
Kate Raworth
Publication Date:
07-2008
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
Oxfam Publishing
Abstract:
In every society, women and men have different roles inside and outside the household, and different resources to deliver them. In the rural communities of developing countries where Oxfam works, men's roles typically focus on earning cash, by growing food, trading, or selling their labour. But it is largely the role of women to provide the food, fuel, water, and care that the family needs (all for no pay), in addition to earning some cash. In such communities, women are likely to have: greater reliance on natural resources – like rivers, wells, reliable rainfall, and forests fewer physical resources – such as land, fertilizer or irrigation, and fewer assets (like machinery, or a bicycle) to use to make money, or to sell as a last resort fewer financial resources – little cash, savings or access to credit, and less access to markets that give a good price for their goods less powerful social resources – due to social and cultural norms that limit their mobility and their voice in decision-making, reinforce traditional roles, and put them at risk of violence fewer human resources – due to having less education, fewer opportunities for training, and less access to official information.
Topic:
Climate Change, Gender Issues, and Non-Governmental Organization

772. Failing Women, Withholding Protection: 15 lost years in making the female condom accessible

Publication Date:
08-2008
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
Oxfam Publishing
Abstract:
Policy makers lament women's vulnerablity to HIV infection, yet for 15 years they have failed to utilise a technology which can help women to protect and empower themselves. The female condom is the only female-initiated method which provides protection from HIV infection; it also prevents unwanted pregnancy. Studies have shown it is acceptable to users, increases the proportion of protected sex acts, and is cost-effective when provided in addition to male condoms. Yet most women cannot access female condoms. New female-initiated technologies such as microbicides will not be available for many years. Female condoms exist now; the push for universal access to them should begin now.
Topic:
Gender Issues and Health

773. Gender and Ethnicity in Post-Conflict Kosovo

Author:
Ira N. Gang, Sumon Kumar Bhaumik, and Myeong-Su Yun
Publication Date:
04-2008
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
United Nations University
Abstract:
The paper examines the comparative economic wellbeing of female- and male-headed households among Serbs and Albanians in post-conflict Kosovo. Evidence from the living standards measurement study (LSMS) household survey, 2001, shows that Serb households, both those headed by women and men, are worse off than Albanians households. We find that female-headed households do not generally suffer more than male-headed households, but there is substantial variation among ethnic groups. While Albanian female-headed households are marginally better-off than Albanian male-headed households, Serb female-headed households have the lowest standard of living.
Topic:
Demographics, Economics, and Gender Issues
Political Geography:
Kosovo, Balkans, and Albania

774. Gender and Informal Sector Analysis in India: Economy Wide Approaches

Author:
Anushree Sinha and Haider Khan
Publication Date:
06-2008
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
United Nations University
Abstract:
The main purpose of this paper is to look at the incorporation of gender and the informal sector within a general equilibrium framework for India. Moreover, we clarify some important links between a gender aware informal sector based social accounting matrix (SAM) and general equilibrium models such as the computable general equilibrium (CGE) models including as a special case the fixed price multiplier (FPM) models. In particular, economy wide modelling of gender and the informal sector is facilitated by the use of national level data and constructing the base data set as an SAM. Another important strategy is to conceptualize the economy within gender structures, entailing the recognition of gender relations as an intervening variable in all economic activities.
Topic:
Economics and Gender Issues
Political Geography:
India and Asia

775. Individual and Collective Resources and Health in Morocco

Author:
Marie-Claude Martin
Publication Date:
03-2008
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
United Nations University
Abstract:
The interaction between available individual and collective resources in the determination of health is largely ignored in the literature on the relationship between poverty and health in developing countries. We analyse the role public resources play in the perception that rural women in Morocco have of their health. These resources are taken to contribute directly and indirectly to the improvement of individual health by, on the one hand, providing a health-promoting environment and, on the other, improving the individual's ability to produce health. The empirical results of multilevel models confirm the expected associations between socioeconomic status, individual vulnerability factors and health. Furthermore, the random part of the model suggests that variation in state of health is also associated with the presence of collective resources. However, the higher the level of women's individual wealth, the less the characteristics of the community in which they live seem to be associated with their health, and the less the potential vulnerability factors seem to constrain their ability to maintain or improve health. Our results suggest that collective investments derived from various areas of activity will be more favourable to improving health, insofar as they are adapted to the initial capacity of women to benefit from them.
Topic:
Gender Issues, Health, and Poverty
Political Geography:
Africa and Morocco

776. Natural Disasters and Remittances: Exploring the Linkages between Poverty, Gender, and Disaster Vulnerability in Caribbean SIDS

Author:
Marlene Attzs
Publication Date:
06-2008
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
United Nations University
Abstract:
This paper explores the linkages between poverty and disaster vulnerability in the context of remittance flows to households in the Caribbean. Jamaica is used as the case study country. The paper discusses the channels through which natural disasters and remittances affect each other but also reviews the distribution of female-headed households in Jamaica as a percentage of households living below the poverty line and seeks to identify whether flows of remittances alleviate the post-disaster living conditions of such households.
Topic:
Disaster Relief, Gender Issues, Health, and Poverty
Political Geography:
Caribbean and Jamaica

777. The Role of Women's Empowerment and Domestic Violence in Child Growth and Undernutrition in a Tribal and Rural Community in South India

Author:
Kavita Sethuraman
Publication Date:
02-2008
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
United Nations University
Abstract:
Moderate undernutrition continues to affect 46 per cent of children under 5 years of age and 47 per cent of rural women in India. Women's lack of empowerment is believed to be an important factor in the persistent prevalence of undernutrition. In India, women's empowerment often varies by community, with tribes sometimes being the most progressive. This paper explores the relationship between women's empowerment, domestic violence, maternal nutritional status, and the nutritional status and growth over six months in children aged 6 to 24 months in a rural and tribal community. This longitudinal observational study undertaken in rural Karnataka, India included tribal and rural subjects. Structured interviews with mothers were conducted and anthropometric measurements were obtained for 820 mother-child pairs, the follow-up rate after 6 months was 82 per cent. The data were analyzed by multivariate regression. Some degree of undernutrition was seen in 83.5 per cent of children and 72.4 per cent of mothers in the sample, moreover the prevalence of undernutrition increased among children at follow up. Domestic violence was experienced by 34 per cent of mothers in the sample. In multivariate analysis, biological variables explained most of the variance in nutritional status and child growth, followed by health-care seeking and women's empowerment variables; socio-economic variables explained the least variance. Women's empowerment variables were significantly associated with child nutrition on enrolment and child growth at follow-up. At follow-up, mother's prior lifetime experience of physical violence significantly undermined child growth in terms of weight-for-age, and older age at marriage and high mobility of mothers predicted less stunting in their children. In addition to the known investments needed to reduce undernutrition, improving women's nutrition, promoting gender equality, empowering women, and ending violence against women could further reduce the prevalence of undernutrition in this segment of the Indian population.
Topic:
Gender Issues and Health
Political Geography:
India and Asia

778. PolicyWatch #1374: Kuwaiti Elections: Democracy in Action, or Inaction?

Author:
Mehdi Khalaji and David Pollock
Publication Date:
05-2008
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
The Washington Institute for Near East Policy
Abstract:
Tomorrow, Kuwait's nearly 400,000 voters -- more than half of them women -- will go to the polls to elect a new parliament. The incoming body will replace the 2006 parliament that was dissolved by the ruling emir, Sheikh Sabah al-Sabah, for failing to work together with the cabinet. Kuwait's parliament is relatively powerful compared to others in the region, but tension with the royal family has often produced only deadlock. Still, the elections are an important and interesting exercise in Arab democracy and may even produce a more constructive political environment.
Topic:
Democratization, Gender Issues, Government, and Politics
Political Geography:
Middle East and Kuwait

779. Global Tensions, Global Possibilities: Everyday Forces of Conformity and Contestation

Author:
Jean Michel Montsion, Samah Sabra, James Gaede, Jeremy D. Kowalski, Rhiannon Mosher, Teresa Kramarz, Kathryn Mossman, Adam Sneyd, Luis Alfredo Marroquin-Campos, Rob Downie, Heather Battles, Adrienne Smith, Ahmed T. Rashid, Joanne Nowak, Liam Riley, David Haldane Lee, Greg Shupak, Arun Nedra Rodrigo, Lauren Scannell, Naomi Achus, and Ethel Tungohan
Publication Date:
07-2008
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Institute on Globalization and the Human Condition, McMaster University
Abstract:
Academics theorizing and analyzing the impacts of globalization on everyday life are conventionally divided between those who highlight the (overt or hidden) opportunities and advantages afforded by globalizing processes and others who emphasize their negative impacts on populations across the world. The former tend to focus on such things as increased access to paid labour, faster modes of communication, and technological ease of transportation (of people and information) across global networks. The latter, in contrast, generally stress the vicious implications of globalization's systemic processes, which continue to exacerbate polarization between rich and poor and, invariably, mean uneven access to labour, communication, and transportation. With this division in mind, the Graduate Student Research Group of the Institute on Globalization and the Human Condition held a conference titled Global tensions, global possibilities in September 2007. The conference organizers intended to bring together graduate students to challenge the above oppositions which often characterize contemporary globalization theories. By gathering an eclectic group of young scholars from various disciplines and backgrounds, the key aim driving Global tensions, global possibilities was to question disciplinary and attitudinal divides in theorizing globalization. A secondary, and related, intention of the organizers was for the conference to be a space in which participants (i.e. presenters, discussants, and audience) would together (re)think the implications of globalizing processes in non-dichotomizing ways that transcend such traditional divides. The organizers recognized that their intentions were not necessarily revolutionary. The works of several prominent scholars in various disciplines have denoted the need to be critical of further polarizing contemporary globalization theory (Comaroff and Comaroff 2001; Mudimbe-Boyi 2002; Ong 2006). For example, in their discussions of globalization, Jean and John Comaroff (2001) have indicated that globalizing processes and their attendant consequences can be neither classified nor understood in simple terms. Like the Comaroffs, the conference organizers felt that one cannot deny the intense messiness of any investigation of globalizing processes. Instead, they wanted to stress that globalization is simultaneously creative and destructive, enabling and constraining, beneficial and detrimental. Given that it has come out of the conference, the same line of reasoning forms the driving force behind this graduate student volume of the Working Paper Series. Below, we discuss our rationale for organizing the volume in the way we have. We begin with a brief discussion of our understanding of the need to move beyond theorizing globalization as either liberating or oppressive. Throughout the following sections, we move back and forth between our theorization of this necessity and the specifics of how the dichotomy beyond which we want to move re-emerged in the context of the conference. In the final section, we provide a brief description of the papers and our motivation for organizing them as we have.
Topic:
Gender Issues, Globalization, Health, Human Rights, Human Welfare, International Organization, Markets, Migration, and Science and Technology

780. In the Shadow of the Brothers: The Women of the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood

Author:
Omayma Abdel-Latif
Publication Date:
10-2008
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Carnegie Endowment for International Peace
Abstract:
In September 2007, the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt released its first political party platform draft. Among the heavily criticized clauses was one that denied women (and Copts) the right to be head of state. “Duties and responsibilities assumed by the head of state, such as army commanding, are in contradiction with the socially acceptable roles for women,” the draft stated. In previous Brotherhood documents there was no specific mention of the position of head of state; rather, they declared that women were allowed to occupy all posts except for al-imama alkubra, the position of caliph, which is the equivalent of a head of state in modern times. Many were surprised that despite several progressive moves the Brotherhood had made in previous years to empower women, it ruled out women's right to the country's top position.
Topic:
Gender Issues, Islam, and Religion
Political Geography:
Middle East and Egypt